“Working with me involves developing a safe and nurturing relationship that offers support, challenges when necessary, and connects with a client’s unique strengths to help foster growth.”
What was your path to becoming a therapist?
As a later career changer, I am personally sensitive to both the joys and the specific challenges that accompany life transitions and change. As a former professional dancer and Pilates teacher, my pathway to supporting people as they heal and grow had previously been focused singularly on working with the physical body. It was through my relationships and partnering with clients in healing their physical pain that my interest in working more deeply with the whole person blossomed. This led me to a significant career and life change, shifting my focus more directly to engaging with the emotional and psychological aspects of the whole person.
What should someone know about working with you?
I view the intake process and first session with me as an opportunity to get a sense of each other, how we might work together, what brings the client into therapy, and what is most important to the client in the present. I tend to be active in the therapeutic process, working collaboratively and striving to create an environment of openness and flexibility. Working with me involves developing a safe and nurturing relationship that offers support, challenges when necessary, and connects with a client’s unique strengths to help foster growth.
What do you do to continue learning and building competencies as a provider?
While my “home base” is as a psychoanalytically-grounded relational therapist, I continue to study and explore additional modalities, such as CBT, DBT, ACT, and somatically-focused approaches. I am currently engaged in an ongoing integrative psychotherapy program to continue to deepen my knowledge and ability to utilize these modalities in specific ways. I embrace a holistic approach to life and learning in general, actively engage in collaboration with other practitioners, and support clients in further exploring additional areas of health and healing.
What would you want people who are hesitant to try therapy to know?
The therapeutic space is one that asks people to approach difficult life experiences, past hurts, emotions, or parts of themselves that have been painful or frightening to face for a multitude of important reasons. It makes absolute sense that starting therapy can feel intimidating, scary, or overwhelming. It is important to know that therapy is a place to explore, to foster curiosity without judgment, to face issues, to build skills, and to connect to parts of yourself you may have been afraid of or felt reluctant to explore.
“It is important to know that therapy is a place to explore, to foster curiosity without judgment, to face issues, to build skills, and to connect to parts of yourself you may have been afraid of or felt reluctant to explore.”